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How Ratan Tata avoided a ‘Kodak Moment’https://bassclusker.com/how-ratan-tata-avoided-a-kodak-moment/
https://bassclusker.com/how-ratan-tata-avoided-a-kodak-moment/#respondWed, 20 Feb 2019 10:44:55 +0000https://bassclusker.com/?p=6836Imagine the scene. It’s the early hours of the morning. A young engineer lies awake, unable to sleep because of the excitement. After what seems like an hour of trying to find a comfy position to nod off, he checks the clock. Just fifteen minutes have elapsed since the last time he looked! He worries […]

]]>Imagine the scene. It’s the early hours of the morning. A young engineer lies awake, unable to sleep because of the excitement. After what seems like an hour of trying to find a comfy position to nod off, he checks the clock.

Just fifteen minutes have elapsed since the last time he looked! He worries about how tired he’ll be in the meeting.

Even after minimal sleep, he bounces out of bed when the alarm finally releases him. Because today is the day he will show the management board the invention that will catapult an already great company to the next level.

The demo goes well. Much to his relief, the prototype works perfectly. He looks expectantly at the assembled executives. Their response leaves him stunned.

“That’s cute—but don’t tell anyone about it.”

What?!

The company was Kodak, and I’m only imagining engineer Steve Sasson’s inner thoughts, but I’m sure you’ll agree it must have been a shock.

Most people know that Kodak invented the digital camera but failed to commercialise it, leading to their dramatic fall. A big part of the problem—which they recognised but failed to address—was that they had power barons running chemical-based film businesses who wouldn’t allow their revenues to be cannibalized.

You can get yourself the best strategy money can buy, but if people won’t implement it because they fear it will disturb their well-feathered nests, you’re sunk.

In the words of one former Kodak CEO, the company “regarded digital photography as the enemy, an evil juggernaut that would kill the chemical-based film and paper business that fuelled Kodak’s sales and profits for decades.”

Faced with key influencers who hope to wish away business reality, stewardship of the organization demands courage. It’s tempting to kick the can down the road.

And that’s a temptation that Ratan Tata resisted. Earlier in its history, executives at Tata Group had treated their parts of the business as their personal fiefdoms to run as they alone saw fit. But when Ratan Tata became chairman in 1991, he squared up to the issue. He began easing the barons out, and, when easing wasn’t enough, he forced the issue, insisting on a compulsory retirement age.

It was confrontational, but it created dozens of opportunities for new talent to rise and helped Tata become India’s largest private corporation.

I’ve seen many leaders who—unlike Ratan Tata—failed to confront recalcitrant power barons. It never goes well for the leader if key influencers are undermining strategy.

Andy’s Advice: Give people a reasonable opportunity to get on board. But realise that these things don’t get better on their own – kick the can down the road at your peril!

Does this take courage? Often, yes! For help thinking these kinds of issues through, check out my whitepaper: Rationally Fearless. And if you’re wrestling with anything like this, give me a call because sometimes there are easier ways to restore harmony to the kingdom.

]]>https://bassclusker.com/how-ratan-tata-avoided-a-kodak-moment/feed/0What does good REALLY look like?https://bassclusker.com/what-does-good-really-look-like/
https://bassclusker.com/what-does-good-really-look-like/#respondThu, 07 Feb 2019 19:01:33 +0000https://bassclusker.com/?p=6831Manchester, 1955. The table tennis club has four tables. Beginners start at Table Four, down on the right. If you win, you move left. At Table One, the winner stays on. Anyone can find a game at the club, but the standard at Table One is high –those players are junior championship contenders: young, fit, […]

The table tennis club has four tables. Beginners start at Table Four, down on the right. If you win, you move left. At Table One, the winner stays on.

Anyone can find a game at the club, but the standard at Table One is high –those players are junior championship contenders: young, fit, serious about their equipment, dressed in immaculate whites. If you fancy your chances against them, you’re welcome to join the queue and have a go. Most likely you’ll be dispatched to the lower tables in a blur, admitting – if you’re honest – that you hardly even saw the ball.

So one afternoon this old guy (he must be at least forty!) wanders in. He’s wearing long trousers, a shirt and tie – and braces! He doesn’t even have tennis shoes – just worn brogues. He raises eyebrows when he joins the queue for the top table. The old guy’s turn comes, and the raised eyebrows are replaced with smirks when he asks to borrow a bat.

The Junior National Champion has been on since lunch and has dispatched all comers. The old guy wipes the floor with the young champion, and stays on the table for an hour or so as others try their luck.

Then he checks his watch, thanks the fellow who’d lent him the bat and ambles towards to door.

“What just happened?“ asks one of the young blades.

Their coach, who slipped in unnoticed half an hour ago, has been watching with amusement. “Oh Mr. Miller used to play for England. I guess it’s in the hands, not the bat.”

Andy’s Advice: It’s so easy to follow the crowd when defining ‘what good looks like’. But how many of the standard trappings really affect results, and how many are just the way everyone does it? How much time do people spend copying what other people claim is ‘best practice’ with effects that are marginal, at best? Look for the differences that really make a difference in your business or career, and then make those your focus.

Let’s look for the difference that makes the difference for you …

Call me to discuss: 07754 232 888 or reply to this email for more information.

Please forward this email to anyone who you know will benefit from accountability and support to get 2019 off to a flying start. If they sign up, I’ll be pleased to send you a signed complementary copy of one of my books (see below) – your choice which.

]]>https://bassclusker.com/what-does-good-really-look-like/feed/0Four Lists for Immediately Improved Resultshttps://bassclusker.com/four-lists-for-immediately-improved-results-2/
https://bassclusker.com/four-lists-for-immediately-improved-results-2/#respondWed, 23 Jan 2019 14:25:56 +0000https://bassclusker.com/?p=6824It will take a couple of minutes to read this, and a few more to make the lists. Any one of the items you come up with could make a dramatic difference to your next 90 days, and beyond. I’m going to suggest you make four lists, and think about them in a particular way: […]

]]>It will take a couple of minutes to read this, and a few more to make the lists. Any one of the items you come up with could make a dramatic difference to your next 90 days, and beyond.

I’m going to suggest you make four lists, and think about them in a particular way:

1. A TO STOP list in order to release resources (time, energy, people, money etc) for more productive uses. Most organizations and individuals are doing things which, while important at one time, now no longer make sense. Ask yourself: “If we weren’t doing this already, would we start doing it today?” If not, then put it on the TO STOP list, and act accordingly.

2. A SNAGS list. Always a popular list with my coaching clients: over time, we – both as individuals and organizations – accumulate workarounds. These are temporary or less-than-ideal ‘solutions’ which become habits. In time, our repertoire or standard ways of operating are dominated by them. For example:

Someone is promoted to baby-sit a dysfunctional team, and then starts to acquire an empire while the fundamentals are never sorted out.

A hand-updated, error prone spreadsheet is controlled by one bottleneck person, where instead there should be a widely-accessible database (for which you probably already have the licenses).

Space is used for temporary storage but becomes de facto warehousing, while staff are crammed into an unsuitably small office area.

Make a SNAGS list, and pick off a few easy ones straightaway – it will liberate a lot of energy.

3. A very short BIG BOLD MOVES list. This one should be one to three items long: a few bold moves that if you did them would make a huge difference. I can’t be too specific as to what this might be in such a short piece, but most people can come up with these when asked. One client of mine, an ambitious and excellent professional service firm, opened an office on the far side of the world in what looked like an extremely brave move. It was actually much lower risk and higher reward than the doubters could have imagined: it made them an international firm, which gave them a certain cachet, adding to their repute and staff prospects, and really helped in the post-2008 downturn where its sales offset lower demand at home.

Your big bold moves will be particular to you, but they are probably already floating around somewhere in the back of your mind. Bring them front and centre – you may be surprised how do-able they are.

4. Drawing on what you’ve learned from the first three lists, you can finally turn your attention to a TO DO list. We all have TO DO lists, but do we honestly work through them in the best order?

Try prioritising tasks from most productive to least productive, then do the most productive first.

Unfortunately, that often means ‘most uncomfortable first’. That might mean calling a customer before scheduling an internal progress meeting, or addressing a conflict in the team before a general catch-up on industry news. Doing lower priority tasks first is often is a kind of procrastination – you can see you’ve ticked a lot of items off at the end of the day, but if they aren’t the big, often more uncomfortable ones, you could be busy doing nothing. Most people (myself included!) find that having someone to keep them accountable is a big help.

Andy’s Advice: These suggestions are extremely simple – so simple that it would be easy to overlook their power, and to say “Oh, yes. Already know that”. However, as a mentor of mine used to say: “To know and not do is to not yet know.” The Four Lists exercise is a very fast way to discover untapped value in what you already have.

]]>https://bassclusker.com/four-lists-for-immediately-improved-results-2/feed/0Breaking Out of The Bubble in 2019https://bassclusker.com/breaking-out-of-the-bubble-in-2019/
https://bassclusker.com/breaking-out-of-the-bubble-in-2019/#respondWed, 19 Dec 2018 12:43:17 +0000http://bassclusker.com/?p=6795Anyone can get caught in a bubble – it happens without you realising it. And even if you notice, it can be hard to escape. I remember one CEO telling me that his big worry was isolation. Not emotional isolation, but isolation from real information. He felt stuck at the end of a corridor, in […]

]]>Anyone can get caught in a bubble – it happens without you realising it. And even if you notice, it can be hard to escape.

I remember one CEO telling me that his big worry was isolation. Not emotional isolation, but isolation from real information. He felt stuck at the end of a corridor, in a corner office, and found it very hard to really know what was going on in his company, with his customers, or indeed in the wider world. He seemed to see the board and his investors more than anyone else. All information came to him in the form of reports. His diary was scheduled for him, and access to him was strictly controlled, albeit with the best of intentions. If he ventured out of his office into the corridor, the people he met were highly motivated to reinforce his existing view of the world.

“And I’m supposed to be in charge here!” he half-joked.

He was a particularly intelligent, insightful and personable guy. This was not the result of willful neglect or a tendency to complacency. It had crept up on him.

To solve the issue, we put together a list of new people and places to visit, and new experiences to seek out, and off he went on tour. He visited designers, academics (and not just business school academics), advertising executives, TED talkers, computer geeks…

He came back with fresh perspectives, renewed energy, new ideas for the business and new ways to inspire and lead his people. And he started having fun at work again.

All of us – and not just CEOs – can get sealed up in our own reality bubbles. It takes active work to resist, and it gets worse – and the isolation gets more dangerous – as the pace of technological change accelerates.

Andy’s Advice: As you think about next year, now is a good time to start planning to have different experiences that will break you out of the bubble. And if you want help in planning and following through, plus drawing actionable lessons from what you learn, here’s how we can work together to make it easier, quicker and more ambitious:

Please forward this post to anyone who you know will benefit from accountability and support to get 2019 off to a flying start. If they sign up, I’ll be pleased to send you a signed complementary copy of one of my books (see below) – your choice which.

]]>https://bassclusker.com/breaking-out-of-the-bubble-in-2019/feed/0Are other peoples’ fears the cause of your frustration?https://bassclusker.com/are-other-peoples-fears-the-cause-of-your-frustration/
https://bassclusker.com/are-other-peoples-fears-the-cause-of-your-frustration/#respondTue, 11 Sep 2018 11:46:59 +0000http://bassclusker.com/?p=6748I was working with a pharmaceutical distribution business that needed to innovate, and fast. Drugs were coming off-patent, and industry forces were going to change who made money and how. The MD was worried. He was also frustrated that his senior managers, who he described as excellent operations people, were failing to come up with […]

]]>I was working with a pharmaceutical distribution business that needed to innovate, and fast. Drugs were coming off-patent, and industry forces were going to change who made money and how. The MD was worried.

He was also frustrated that his senior managers, who he described as excellent operations people, were failing to come up with innovative responses to the new needs of their customers.

As we discussed his objectives, he was able to paint a picture of how he wanted these managers to innovate.

Then he said, “But they damn well better still hit their monthly KPIs.”

This was just not going to work.

Why?

Well put yourself in the shoes of the managers. Their incentives are clearly to keep operating well and not to worry about the innovation.

Here’s how it goes in the mind of the manager: “If I try to innovate, I’ll have to find the extra time by working longer hours, and I may well end up failing, which, whatever people say, will probably be held against me later. But if I just keep on operating, all that will happen is I will get whinged at by the MD. Big deal. It’s not a sacking offense is it? Anyway, I know the system really well. They need me to make sure the drugs get delivered. On the other hand, if I MISS my KPIs, then I’ll have real trouble.”

Only by changing the incentives could the MD hope to get these managers to give innovation some serious attention.

These sorts of calculations are done instantaneously, often unconsciously. If you are finding that people agree to cross-sell, report problems or support strategic changes, but then don’t, ask yourself how they are weighing up the various incentives.

In my last newsletter, I recommended that you do this by putting yourself in your employees’ shoes and asking four questions:

What will happen if I do?

What will happen if I don’t?

What won’t happen if I do?

What won’t happen if I don’t?

I’ve come up with a visual for this: I call it the Incentive Audit. Last week I gave a talk about the role of fear in organizations, and I showed the visual. The audience found it valuable, so here it is:

Andy’s Advice: How to use this in your company

If you are frustrated because people aren’t following through, develop your empathy for the way those people weigh up incentives by putting yourself in your employees’ shoes. Use this Incentive Audit to make sure your review is comprehensive. What needs to change? Are you asking the impossible? Are you saying one thing while your exemplars are demonstrating another?

]]>https://bassclusker.com/are-other-peoples-fears-the-cause-of-your-frustration/feed/0Reduce fear to release potentialhttps://bassclusker.com/reduce-fear-to-release-potential/
https://bassclusker.com/reduce-fear-to-release-potential/#respondFri, 25 May 2018 06:35:38 +0000http://bassclusker.com/?p=6662Fear is a bigger factor in organizational life than we like to admit, and it works against many of the best-practices that are espoused by leaders and their gurus. Reduce fear, and a lot of good things can happen. To start with, I’ve found that senior people often have no idea how intimidated they make […]

]]>Fear is a bigger factor in organizational life than we like to admit, and it works against many of the best-practices that are espoused by leaders and their gurus.

Reduce fear, and a lot of good things can happen.

To start with, I’ve found that senior people often have no idea how intimidated they make people feel (I’m not talking about managers who use intimidation on purpose. I’ll get to them).

I was talking to a client, a managing director in financial services. He had instituted an open-door policy but was finding that people weren’t using it. He was frustrated, because he’d learned that people were scared to talk to him about anything important.

He’s a very genuine person who would not abuse it if people were open and told him what was going on. He’d be grateful for the information and would do the right thing with it.

But, as I pointed out, his employees didn’t know about his sincerity. They had been ‘trained’ by previous employers, less enlightened managers, even at home and at school.

Most had come to the view that, as one cynic memorably put it to me: “The call for openness in an organization is a Darwinian mechanism for ‘selecting out’ the politically naive.”

That kind of cynicism is not a help when you want to release more of the potential of both individuals and the organization as a whole.

Consider innovation. It’s vital to the ongoing health of businesses. But talk of innovation often engenders fear.

Leaders will say things like “We need to fail fast”, and “If you want to increase your success rate, you need to increase your failure rate”.

Hearing this, many employees will do a quick mental calculation and decide, “Interesting, but better to concentrate on safe bets”. These are people who are answering ‘Yes’ when asked to innovate, but are then rationalising their lack of progress by saying, “I was busy with the day job.”

What can you do to reduce fear in your organization? Here are five ideas for a start:

1) Model the right behaviour. It’s no use banging on about values if prominent managers are getting away with violating them. My bank’s website tells me that one of their values is Integrity, which it describes in part as the willingness to “Challenge things I believe to be wrong and be open to challenge from others.” Yet their CEO just tried to uncover the identity of a confidential whistleblower, only to be let off with a fine and a slapped wrist. What message do employees believe? The values on the website, or the story about their boss in the newspaper? By the same token, if you tell people to fail fast, look after them when they do.

2) Like GE’s and Intuit’s work with Lean Startup, create structures in which people can try unsuccessful things without being labelled a failure. We’re having great success using Lean Startup approaches: after all, if an ‘unsuccessful’ experiment quickly saves the company from wasting money pursuing a dead end and instead points it in the right direction, it’s an extremely valuable thing.

3) Teach people how to speak truth to power without upsetting the powerful. Have you noticed that your most reliable and conscientious sources of info are often not your most diplomatic? They upset managers who then block the information from reaching you. The skills of diplomatically framing inconvenient truths can be taught.

4) Empathy: Put yourself in your employees’ shoes. Then ask these four questions in relation to any behaviour your organization would like to see more of (like trying new things, cross-selling, reporting problems etc):

Andy’s Advice: People don’t generally admit to fear at work, because they are frightened of appearing fearful. So they offer plausible-sounding rationalisations for not doing the things they fear. If you aren’t seeing the action you want and need, reducing fear may be the key.

]]>https://bassclusker.com/reduce-fear-to-release-potential/feed/0The Courage to Protect Your Culturehttps://bassclusker.com/dealing-strongly-with-those-who-use-intimidation/
https://bassclusker.com/dealing-strongly-with-those-who-use-intimidation/#respondMon, 07 May 2018 10:00:38 +0000http://bassclusker.com/?p=6641I’m not sure of the original attribution of the accompanying visual – I think Jack Welch talked about the principle in a video I saw once. It speaks to an issue that I see too often: organizations have nice posters around the place proclaiming their values, but someone who habitually violates them is tolerated because […]

]]>I’m not sure of the original attribution of the accompanying visual – I think Jack Welch talked about the principle in a video I saw once. It speaks to an issue that I see too often: organizations have nice posters around the place proclaiming their values, but someone who habitually violates them is tolerated because their numbers are good. Google ‘whistleblower bank’ and you’ll get some good contemporary examples.

If you allow people with good results but poor respect for your values to continue with their act, you utterly undermine your leadership credibility and erode the culture.

I have often interviewed clients’ employees to be told that a draconian or sociopathic manager is causing poor morale, the departure of good but under-appreciated people, or is even upsetting customers, but that “the boss must want them to be like that, or else they would have done something about it.”

As long as we can verify the facts, I tell my clients that they should indeed do something about it. This is a test of leadership courage. Although it may be tempting to keep these ‘high performers’ for the apparently attractive results they bring, you actually incur all sorts of hidden costs: managerial time dealing with the friction, lower morale among other staff, loss of talent, and knock-on effects on customers. And weakened managerial credibility for you.

]]>https://bassclusker.com/dealing-strongly-with-those-who-use-intimidation/feed/0Waiting for perfect conditions that never come?https://bassclusker.com/waiting-for-perfect-conditions-that-never-come/
https://bassclusker.com/waiting-for-perfect-conditions-that-never-come/#respondMon, 30 Apr 2018 09:48:23 +0000http://bassclusker.com/?p=6634My friend Helga Henry recently sent me an excellent Guardian article by Oliver Burkeman. I like Burkeman. While pop psychology is a field full of bunkum, he is one of the few writers on the topic worth reading: irreverent, sceptical and sensible. The article talks about “The Importance Trap”: an often-unrecognised cause of procrastination. Oliver describes […]

]]>My friend Helga Henry recently sent me an excellent Guardian article by Oliver Burkeman. I like Burkeman. While pop psychology is a field full of bunkum, he is one of the few writers on the topic worth reading: irreverent, sceptical and sensible.

“…the way that, the more an activity really matters to you, the more you start to believe you need focus, energy and long stretches of uninterrupted time in which to do it – things that, you tell yourself, you currently lack. And so the less likely you are to do it. Unimportant stuff gets done; important stuff doesn’t.” [my emphasis]

Oliver gives personal examples, like getting round to reading the classics. My take is that it’s vital for business leaders to be very aware of The Importance Trap, too. Because it’s a trap that lies in wait not only for individuals, but also for organizations.

I am always hearing executives talk about some new initiative they need to take. It might be something that would solve a big problem, like getting people to stop over-serving a dwindling market just because it’s familiar and comfortable, and to spend more time and effort on a more promising new market instead. Or it might be something that would create loads of new value, like getting different silos in the business to start working together on innovations that benefit the customer, rather than squabbling over budgets and turf.

Whatever the issue, they’ll do a good job of convincing me of it’s importance and urgency.

Then they’ll say: “But we won’t do it YET. I want to WAIT until I can dedicate more resources, give people a good run at it, get these hires completed…”

I call this “Getting ready to prepare to start to change”, and it’s one of the major causes of slow progress towards strategic goals.

“But,” you might protest, “I really do need to wait.”

And the rationale will be solid, no doubt.

The thing is, though, that when the appointed time finally comes around, you may find:

Someone else has now grabbed those resources you were going to use.

The people you earmarked are now busy with other new things (people are always too busy, aren’t they? They rarely get an absolutely clear run at anything.)

While you’ve been making those new appointments, one of the existing contributors you were counting on has left your organization for pastures new, because they saw the issue too, and didn’t think change was happening fast enough,

The timing is never ideal. Sometimes, waiting for it to become ideal is just that: waiting.

One CEO I know has a sign on his wall to inspire him. It show the words of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, French General and Allied Supreme Allied Commander during the final year of the First World War, credited by historians for the strategy which secured the Allied victory. This is what the sign says:

]]>https://bassclusker.com/waiting-for-perfect-conditions-that-never-come/feed/0They can’t add value if they can’t get in the gamehttps://bassclusker.com/they-cant-add-value-if-they-cant-get-in-the-game/
https://bassclusker.com/they-cant-add-value-if-they-cant-get-in-the-game/#respondMon, 26 Mar 2018 11:02:09 +0000http://bassclusker.com/?p=6620A few years ago, I met with the strategy director of a well-known insurance company to discuss an executive development project. She was very excited about the company’s growth plans, and supportive of the proposed project, but man was she frustrated! She was ex-McKinsey. As you would expect, she was very smart. In fact, her […]

]]>A few years ago, I met with the strategy director of a well-known insurance company to discuss an executive development project. She was very excited about the company’s growth plans, and supportive of the proposed project, but man was she frustrated!

She was ex-McKinsey. As you would expect, she was very smart. In fact, her mind operated at a extremely high clock speed even for an alumna of The Firm.

She talked ten-to-the-dozen. But what she said was clear, cogent and very interesting. It was also what her company needed to hear. Her frustration was that executives at the next level down couldn’t keep up with her.

It was easy enough to see why.

I reflected the situation back to her: “They are like talented and potentially high performing middle ranking players on the world junior tennis tour, and you’re Venus Williams. You’re just warming up, but frankly they aren’t even seeing the ball!

“Now, you hired and promoted them for a reason, so my guess is that at least some of them have the potential to give you a good game.

“I think it’s an issue of calibration. If they could just return one ball to you, maybe you could get a sense of where they are at and adjust, and my bet is you could then help speed them up hugely. Certainly, the most talented ones would rise to the top and it would be a lot more satisfying for you, and valuable for the company.”

I concluded: “Let’s get them to the point where they can return the ball.”

The programme that we put together did exactly that, concentrating on consultative skills, packaging information simply, building strong cases for action – a lot of the stuff they might teach a new recruit at an elite consulting firm, for example!

And once the participants got in the game, the strategy director found them a lot easier to mentor and develop further,

I’ve seen this phenomenon any number of times: clients who are top class performers who are struggling to bridge the gap to direct reports (who may or may not have the potential to operate at the same level).

Typically, in an effort to bridge that gap, the boss compensates by giving increasingly detailed instructions to the report.

It sort-of works. Until something changes. Then the boss pivots effortlessly, but in the act of pivoting, rips the gap open again!

Andy’s Advice: If you are finding that your direct reports can’t keep up, despite their effort and apparent potential, resist the temptation to spell out instructions in increasingly exhaustive detail. Instead, take steps to raise their games. They may need more knowledge. They probably need more skills. And they almost certainly need new behaviours.

]]>https://bassclusker.com/they-cant-add-value-if-they-cant-get-in-the-game/feed/0“Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.”https://bassclusker.com/oh-power-gift-give-us-see-others-see-us/
https://bassclusker.com/oh-power-gift-give-us-see-others-see-us/#respondWed, 21 Feb 2018 10:36:45 +0000http://bassclusker.com/?p=6596(“O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” – Robert Burns in To A Louse) Asking for testimonials is invaluable for marketing, of course, but there’s another less obvious – and potentially more valuable –benefit: You may be surprised to find that you are more valuable to your […]

]]>(“O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” – Robert Burns in To A Louse)

Asking for testimonials is invaluable for marketing, of course, but there’s another less obvious – and potentially more valuable –benefit:

You may be surprised to find that you are more valuable to your customers than you think.

The great thing about this Surprise Value is that you can easily build on it to make what you do more attractive to customers, and even at times develop successful new revenue opportunities.

For example, I noticed a pattern recently in testimonials from advisory clients.

The Surprise Value was this: I was giving them the support and encouragement to stick to their guns.

One leader said I helped her and her board, “hold the strategic line when everything around us was going nuts.”

A founder I worked with said I helped his business, “fulfil its potential without succumbing to pressure to compromise the vision”.

He said a big part of that was about holding the line on fees and went on to suggest that this kind of advice was ideal for people who don’t want their vision to “get lost, derailed, or diluted along the way.”

I hadn’t recognised that this aspect of my work was something that people were valuing, but since then I’ve started to emphasise it in my conversations with prospective advisory clients. After all, there are all kinds of pressures that can force leaders to compromise: on fees, on the type of work they accept, and on their strategic direction. It can severely dilute results. And compromising on things you care about is very stressful.

(Caveat: sticking to your guns come what may can be fatal, so you need advisory relationships which include open-minded and challenging sense-checking).

Andy’s advice:

Use testimonials not only for promotional purposes, but also to identify value you are delivering without appreciating it.

Make sure you have dependable sources of advice and encouragement for when you need to stick to your guns.